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Re: Fw: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
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JM to RSG: Your perspective includes a real CQ and his actual real murder, not the killing of another (innocent) man's resulting from HH's delusional states. I arrive at the latter conclusion--that Humbert has killed an innocent man--in my paper "Editorial In(ter)ference: Errata and Aporia in Lolita," which is available online in Miranda. Best, Bruce Stone
Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:54:13 -0300
From: jansy@AETERN.US
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
R S Gwynn [addresses JM's "Is it always necessary
to resort to meta-fiction while exploring the possible worlds of a novel? How
shall we consider the status of "Gradus" in "Pale Fire," or Kinbote's reports
about his actual delusions?... HH might even have killed some other guy who he
thought had been his nymphet's stalker and abductor ..."] "I'm sure thatVN
continually returned to ...his father's assassination...I don't think that
Humbert's murder of CQ is very relevant here, but the accidental murder of JS
probably is, at least in some remote autobiographical way....I won't even go
into the whole Gradus thing except to ask one simple question: Why did VN go to
such pains to establish the Goldsworth/Grey connection except as foreshadowing
to give a "rational" explanation as to why JS (who resembled the Judge and was
just outside his house) was shot by an escaped madman as a result of mistaken
identity? Red herrings galore? I don't think so. Gradus is Kinbote's
fantasy (How does he know about the various movements of Gradus in Europe, for
example, except from reports from his equally fantastical sources, which may be
totally his own invention?)..."
JM: Your perspective includes a real CQ and his actual real murder,
not the killing of another (innocent) man's resulting from HH's
delusional states. There's no arguing against that point of view which, I
believe, is consensual. But I believe it's still possible to explore new
things in the novel. This is why Iwas trying to apply to it a slightly
slanted angle. I wanted to test if there are other ways of looking at
"Lolita".
For me, Clare Q (the evil dissolute guy, whose brother is Dr. Ivory,
suggesting the white pieces in a game of chess) is as much a creation
of HH's deluded mind as Gradus is a product of Charles Kinbote's. This is
why in the question I placed in relation to "metafiction," I
inquired if a character's delusional creations are part of the novel's
fictional reality, or if they should be seens as "fiction inside
fiction" (I suppose you favor the latter)
I'm growing rather fond of, at least, one thing in my most recent flights
of fancy (and it may alter what one considers "Nabokov's moral
values") So much so that I'm sure it's been already described by lots of
scholars who are in a better position to judge than I am for I'm really positive
about it. I think that "Lolita's" last sentence was
directly authored by Vladimir Nabokov (I am thinking of
aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the
refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my
Lolita"). If he is HH's "fiend indeed," then his persecution to
liberate Lolita from HH's clutches may also lead us to
suppose that Vladimir Nabokov's ploy, from the very start, has been to
disguise his endeavours to save Lolita.
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